


Double Exposure

by irrationalgame



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M, nervous breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29054493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalgame/pseuds/irrationalgame
Summary: Jimmy didn’t exist. Jimmy was nothing. Jimmy was as make-believe as wishing. Wishing had never won him anything. Praying was wishing for grownups, and just as useless.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent
Comments: 17
Kudos: 43





	Double Exposure

**Author's Note:**

> This fell out of my head at 2am. I don’t know where it came from but here it is. Insomnia is a funny thing. Unbeta’d and barely edited!

Jimmy had always been a strange sort of lad, prone to flights of fancy and fits of temper. His Da’ had always blamed his old mum for spoiling him; his mum had blamed his Da’ for the same crime. They’d both been just as guilty of it. So when they’d left, both of ‘em within months of the other, Jimmy had entered into the world naive to his own strangeness. They’d coddled him from it; a kindness that hadn’t really been, as he’d learned hard and fast he ought to hide who he really was. It had been a shock as unpleasant as falling through ice into a freezing lake, and nearly as deadly.

But he’d learned quickly. He was handsome enough that stretching a smile over his face worked well; no one cared enough to poke holes at its paper-thin surface. He was well-spoken enough that they didn’t notice every sentence dripped thick with honeyed lies. He was clever enough that he could pretend as well as any actor of the screen, holding up cards to explain away his own peculiarities with a wave of a deft, piano-playing hand. James was Jimmy but he wasn’t either at all. He was a ventriloquist with a pretty-faced dummy who sometimes forgot to throw his voice well enough in the presence of one Thomas Barrow.

Jimmy didn’t know really, how Thomas managed to cut through his veneer like he was peeling back the husk to reveal something good within. Because somehow he found good where Jimmy was certain there wasn’t any. Jimmy tried to ruin him; no, he allowed someone else to do it and for once he was the puppet rather than the master. But Thomas, even after that, had thrown himself under all and any bus available to protect someone who didn’t deserve it. Jimmy deserved that beating and yet Thomas took it. Jimmy deserved his hatred, yet Thomas loved him. It was as if Jimmy’s thoughts had been translated into a foreign, runic language he had no chance of deciphering without the key.

Thomas was the key.

Their friendship was a jig of one step forward and another back, like Morris dancers moving in to clack the sticks of understanding before darting back out lest one of them cross whatever line they’d drawn in the sand between them. The line of respectable distance; Jimmy wanted to kick it to dust. Thomas never laid a hand on him now and it was all he ever thought of. It was maddening; he hated Thomas for it and loved him. He didn’t want to hurt Jimmy again; he wouldn’t be another mucky-muck like Anstruther, all a duplicitous fold of respectability and despicableness. Their friendship that was never just that, was like trying to dance with someone who wouldn’t hold you, but instead glanced at you from the corner of their eye before approximating your movements. It was destined to end in a clash; of bodies and tempers.

“Fuck, _off_!” Jimmy screamed; not at Thomas, though some of the sentiment was aimed at him, but at Alfred who had needled and nagged until Jimmy could hold up his mask no more. The game was up. “Just leave me alone!” A punch was thrown but missed the mark and crushed into the wall. Jimmy wanted to keep punching until the plaster was red.

Alfred might as well have been stone, his mouth a white line. Carson was not so; his face was darker than Jimmy had ever seen, and oh boy, had he seen it.

Thomas swooped in, smile fixed unnaturally. Jimmy knew it was false, likely Carson too, though he wouldn’t acknowledge it. His gaze flitted between Jimmy’s shaking hands and wet eyes and said, more softly than Jimmy had ever heard him speak before; “Mr Carson, please, may I?” Something unsaid passed between the more senior men; Carson’s features softened but a jot, and he nodded.

Then a hand was at Jimmy’s elbow, leading him away. It couldn’t be Thomas’s hand; he never touched. But it was, it was the half-gloved left, burning a brand into Jimmy’s right elbow that surely said; _idiot, insane, queer little chap, whatever shall we do with you until the men in white arrive, eh?_

A door closed - they were in Carson’s pantry though Jimmy had no idea how they’d reached it from the servant’s hall. Jimmy was on his knees, his collar and tie murdering him, hanging him even as he scrabbled with useless hands to untie them. Thomas snapped his fingers and they vanished. Jimmy couldn’t breathe. Thomas pushed their foreheads together and that was all Jimmy felt for the next ten, twenty, however many minutes. It was a second and his whole lifetime. He didn’t know.

Jimmy didn’t exist. Jimmy was nothing. Jimmy was as make-believe as wishing. Wishing had never won him anything. Praying was wishing for grownups, and just as useless.

He didn’t know he’d said it aloud until Thomas answered.

“That’s nonsense,” he said, “you’re everything. To me you’re everything,” and he said it in such a tone that Jimmy would’ve believed the earth was flat and the sun orbited the moon if he’d claimed it as true. Jimmy didn’t know they were kissing until they stopped and he couldn’t breathe again for missing it.

He didn’t know he was crying until Thomas was mopping his cheeks.

He didn’t know anything. At least that much was a constant.

“You - how did you know?” Jimmy sat back on his heels, his knees groaning from the unforgivingness of the floor.

Thomas had an arm around him but it wasn’t enough. He didn’t have enough arms for how Jimmy needed to be held. He wanted to crawl inside his ribcage.

“You’d been on the downwards slide for a while. I tried but - you wouldn’t talk.” He was tired and pinched about the eyes. “You’d go off in a pet if I even insinuated there was anything wrong.”

“I don’t think I knew.”

“I don’t think you know yourself at all, Jimmy.”

He nodded. No point lying when Thomas looked through him like he was made of glass.

“Double exposure.”

Thomas frowned at the non-sequitur.

Jimmy shook his head, thoughts falling into place like a settling snow globe. “Jimmy Kent is like a photo that’s been doubly exposed. On the surface it’s a flower - a pretty _bachelor button_ \- but behind it’s something bad and twisted, like a body gone into rigour.”

“No.” Thomas said. “Bullshit.”

Jimmy blinked.

Thomas ghosted a hand though his hair. “You’re like a watch Jimmy. Simple enough to read, aesthetically pleasing, smooth and polished. But lift the case off and there’s a mess of clockwork and all sorts of gubbins in there. And d’ya know what? Some bastard who don’t know what they’re doin’ has been muckin’ around inside. You can’t do that with clockwork, you need a light touch or else you’ll get bits all bent out and it’ll never go back right.”

Jimmy’s lip wouldn’t stop quivering no matter how he chewed it between his teeth. “Never. That’s too long to walk around tickin’ wrong.”

Thomas smiled easily. “Lucky for you I know how to fix clockwork. Had my own knocked out enough times. But you have to let me.”

“Don’t push past where it’s comfortable.”

Thomas blinked. Words from so long ago they seemed like another lifetime. “I’d never.”

“I know.”


End file.
